


We Blaze Away

by Edoraslass



Series: Dirty Old Town [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, M/M, this is going to hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:26:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edoraslass/pseuds/Edoraslass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From what their inside man’s told him, Arthur doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, and why would he need to?</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Blaze Away

**Author's Note:**

> Set after 1928, before 1933  
> Warnings: Period attitudes towards Italians and gay men, gangsters doing what gangsters do
> 
> Title from The Decemberists' "The Soldiering Life"
> 
> For a prompt by mind_conundrum on the kinkmeme

~*~

It’s a rough ride down a rough road in a rough truck with bad brakes, and “bad breaks” describes the series of events that led him here to a capital T. Dominick Cobb doesn’t let himself to think about that now; he focuses on the fact that at least two other agents know he took off to investigate a rumour of a massive bootleg operation and they’ll notice if he’s gone too long.

Will they notice in time, that’s the real question.

When his hands and feet are bound and the bag’s pulled off his head, he’s not in the least surprised to find himself in a damp warehouse looks like it’s been abandoned for years. Course it hasn’t been, though; over the musty scent of mold he can smell yeast and rye and he thinks, _At least the info was solid._ His entire face is throbbing, and he may or may not have a busted rib or three.

He _is_ moderately surprised to see Arthur standing there. From what their inside man’s told him, Arthur doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, and why would he need to? He’s gone from errand boy to head boss of the biggest criminal organization in three states in ten short years, laying waste to his competition and making a fortune off Prohibition, and a man like that doesn’t fuck around with petty concerns like persistent agents from the Bureau of Prohibition, he snaps his fingers and six hoods jump to take care of the problem.

But Cobb’s not just any prohi, is he? 

“Scram,” Arthur barks, and the group of thugs leave the room, all but one, clearly just muscle, with wide shoulders and a quietly hideous green shirt under an ill-fitting grey suit. He positions himself in front of the door like there’s a real chance Cobb’s gonna make a run for it. Cobb’s positive the other mugs are lined up in the hallway outside, milling around like dogs waiting to be called in for leftovers after dinner’s through.

Arthur stares at Cobb, wordless. Last time Cobb saw him, Arthur was skinny as an alley cat, all sharp bones threatening to poke holes in his threadbare uniform, face hollow and eyes still haunted with the carnage they’d seen in France and Flanders and the rest of Europe, still favouring his left shoulder where the sawbones had dug out shrapnel with little care and less grace. 

Now Arthur’s sleek, like a cat on the savannah, well-fed, smoothly muscled under charcoal pinstripes that cost more than most cars, eyes flat and hard under the brim of his fedora and if he’s favouring his left side, it’s because he’s packing heat in a shoulder holster. 

“Goddammit, Cobb,” Arthur says finally, shoving his hat back on his head. His voice is cold. “I warned you. You knew what I was. But you had to go pokin’ your nose in places it shouldn’t be pokin’. You couldn’t just look the other way.”

Cobb tries to shrug and gets a stabbing pain up both arms for his trouble. “Looking the other way not in the job description,” he points out. “Poking my nose is.”

Arthur gives a mirthless chuckle. “The job,” he mocks. “Didn’t have to take _that_ job, though, did you? If I was the kind of fella to take things personal, I’d say you were tryin’ to prove somethin’.”

“Not all of us had something to come back to, Arthur,” Cobb snaps; no sense in being polite when the odds against him making out of here alive are slim to none and falling with every passing moment. “If you call mowing down innocent citizens and good lawmen ‘a job’.”

“ _I_ offered you a job,” Arthur shoots back. “And if you think them who’re gettin’ shot are innocent, you really are a sap. You got no idea what’s goin’ on.”

“I know you’re breaking the law and you don’t give a shit who gets hurt so long as the dough comes rolling in,” Cobb says, “and if you really thought I’d take a job working for you, then you’re the sap.”

Something barely flickers in Arthur’s eyes; once upon a time, Cobb would have known what that meant, but this man standing in front of him is as far from the doughboy Cobb knew as the moon is from Paducah and he’s got no clue. “I’m the one standin’ here in Italian leather and you’re the one tied to a chair with a busted nose,” Arthur says, arch and smug. “Who’s the sap again?” 

“I’m not the only fella working for Shouse,” Cobb replies, trying to shift to a more comfortable position despite the fact he knows there’s no such thing and it only makes him hurt more. “And there’s more fellas than me know about your operation.”

Arthur laughs, a contemptuous sound that causes a strange pain in the middle of Cobb’s chest that’s got nothing to do with those aching ribs. “Well, you prohis won’t be gettin’ no more use outta Nash, if that’s what you’re thinkin’,” he says, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “He broke like a China plate.”

Cobb flinches; Nash was a young, green agent and Cobb had argued against sending him undercover, but it wasn’t his call and so under Nash went. He’d like to hope it was quick, but that’s a kind of stupid Cobb’s never been. 

Arthur takes off his suit jacket, drapes it over the only other chair in the room, hangs his hat on the back of the chair. There’s that shoulder holster, heavy with what Cobb thinks is a standard police-issue shooter. Lots of gangsters use those; you can’t tell from a bullet if the person who fired was a cop or a criminal. 

Over by the door, the bimbo shifts restlessly, like he’s bored with all this gum-flapping, like he wants something to do. Cobb doesn’t think about what that fella’s purpose here might be.

“You couldn’t just take the fuckin’ money.” There’s a tinge of weariness to Arthur’s voice, but Cobb doesn’t mistake that for a sign of hope. It’s more like Arthur’s annoyed with this penny-ante bullshit, irritated that he’s had to come down off the pedestal he’s put himself on and risk getting his expensive suit dirty. “You had to be _noble_. You ain’t walkin’ outta here, you gotta know that.”

Cobb does know that, but he says anyway, “You don’t _have_ to do anything but what you want to do, Arthur. You’re the big cheese around here.”

Arthur sighs, rubs a hand over his face and sits down on the edge of the chair. Cobb takes an inappropriate moment to note that Arthur’s hands are still as graceful and slender as ever. “Want’s got nothin’ to do with it,” he replies stiffly, “and you know it. I’m not puttin’ everything I’ve built at risk for you, and fuck you for askin’ me to. It’s just hooch. People been drinkin’ since the dawn of time and you think somethin’ as worthless as a law’s gonna stop them, you need to have your head examined. It’s a demand, and if I didn’t supply it, someone else would." He gives an exasperated sigh. "Like I ain’t got enough trouble with those dago bastards tryin’ to run me into the ground, I gotta have trouble like you government fuckers.”

“I didn’t _ask_ you to do a goddamn thing, and it’s not ‘just hooch’,” Cobb snarls. “Christ, you never understood about common decency. How could you, lifting wallets and handing out beatings before you could shave? You and everyone like you are a danger to everyone else who’s trying to just live their lives and make an honest living. But you don’t know from honest, do you?”

“Everyone wasn’t raised in nice houses with running water and radiators and food on the table for every meal, Dominick.” Arthur leaps to his feet, voice sharp as broken glass. “How often’d you have to put cardboard in your shoes to keep water from leakin’ in the holes? How many trips you make to the charity kitchen, haulin’ four sisters behind you cause your ma spent the grocery money on rotgut gin?”

Cobb knows all this; Cobb knows everything about Arthur’s childhood and that he ended up working for the most powerful gangster in town because it was the quickest way to feed his family and keep them out of the poorhouse. He knows all this, and having it thrown in his face only pisses him off, because until today, he never said one word against Arthur doing what he had to to survive, but hell, it’s not as if he has anything to lose. “Not everyone with holes in their shoes decides that a life of crime and murder is the answer, Arthur.”

“Yeah, and those people are still walkin’ around with holes in their shoes and buryin’ their kids when they can’t afford to pay a doctor.” Arthur’s right in front of him now, arms crossed over his chest, arrogance radiating from every line of his body. “And you know who they come to when they need new shoes and medicine? Me. Cause this is my fuckin’ neighborhood, these are my people, and I look after them. Who’d take care of them if I wasn’t around, Cobb? The Bureau of Prohibition?” 

There’s nothing Cobb can say to that, and even if there was, he wouldn’t. Because the end here doesn’t justify the means, nothing justifies the people Arthur’s killed or had killed, he’s not the white knight he’s convinced himself he is, and nothing Cobb says is going to get through Arthur’s thick skull anyhow. 

They both fall silent. The hooligan in front of the door lights up, blowing smoke rings into the air in a long stream. 

After a while, Cobb says quietly, “Who’d’ve thought it’d come to this? You and me?”

Arthur drops back into the chair, regarding him with his hands steepled over his nose, face expressionless, like it used to get right before an assault. Cobb remembers French mud and a German rain of mortars; he remembers furtive groping over clothing in foxholes in the middle of starless nights, a meeting of mouths hot with desperation and fear and a fierce will to make it back home alive. He remembers Arthur’s gasping breath against his neck; he remembers biting his already-parched lips raw to keep from crying out. 

He remembers it all, like it was yesterday, like it was going to be again, right now, and all he has to do is give in, fall like so many of his fellow agents and just take a goddamn bribe, walk away with a pocketful of money and his life intact.

But he can’t. It’s not who he is. He believes in the law, he believes that what Arthur’s doing is wrong on every conceivable level, and he believes –no, he _knows_ that if he caved to a tyrant, even this tyrant, who once he knew inside out and upside down, his life wouldn’t be worth a goddamn plugged nickel in the only way that matters. He’d never be able to look at himself in the mirror again.

“I would’ve,” Arthur says abruptly, and those words are like a swift left to the jaw with brass knuckles. “I would’ve thought it. I _did_ think it, Dom. That’s why I offered you a job. To keep it from comin’ to this. Guess I am a sap after all.”

Cobb holds his breath to keep from saying anything; he swallows whatever stupid, pointless words want to escape and they tear his throat like three-penny nails. 

“This was always going to happen,” Arthur says far too casually. “I knew you wouldn’t take the job. I know you, Dom, even if you never really knew me.”

He stands up again, goes over the gorilla at the door. They confer in a whisper for several moments; the thug glances over Arthur’s shoulder at Cobb, looks him up and down like he’s searching for the answer to an old question, and with a force so strong it nearly makes him ill, Cobb is struck with the certain knowledge that this guy, this …this _palooka_ with arms like a stevedore is the one keeping Arthur's bed warm at night. 

Oh, he’s sure that Arthur has a whole bevy of beauties on a string, in his gin joints every night draped in flappers and showgirls and uptown debs out for a night of slumming, nailing any or all of them as it pleases him - and Cobb can’t blame him for that, no such thing as a pansy in gangland or any other land, for that matter, man’s gotta do all he can to keep it on the QT or end up throat-slit in a ditch - but _that_ motherfucker is the one who gets the real Arthur. The one Cobb doesn’t know, the one Cobb will never know, and doesn’t want to know. 

The palooka claps Arthur on the shoulder; Arthur’s head tilts sideways and Cobb swallows hard, letting his own head fall forward so he can't see, willing himself not to remember him and Arthur in that very same pose, saying good-bye in front of Grand Central. He hears the door snick shut, and when he looks up again, the thug is gone; it’s just him, and Arthur.

Arthur strides back over to Cobb, drawing his gun as he walks with an unthinking grace that’d take Cobb’s breath, if he had any breath left to take. He was always like that, once he made a decision, that was it, straight into it, no hesitation. 

Cobb’s Arthur doesn’t exist any more. That Arthur hasn’t existed for a very long time, if he ever really existed in the first place. There’s only the Arthur with the barrel of his gun pressed unwaveringly against Cobb’s forehead.

“I knew you,” Cobb says, so softly that Arthur leans in to hear him. “But I guess that doesn’t count for anything.”

Arthur’s chest hitches, quick enough that Cobb isn’t sure he actually saw it. “It counts for somethin’,” he reveals, voice softening just enough that for the briefest of instants, Cobb can hear the echo of the twenty-year-old boy who saved his life, whose life he saved. And while he’s still dizzy with that memory, Arthur reaches out and brushes his thumb down Cobb’s cheekbone,a feather-light burning like a spark fizzling out against flesh. “That’s why it’s me, and not one of them yahoos out in the hall. That’s why I’ll send you back in one piece, in a box to your boss, instead of your wife.”

Cobb thinks about his beautiful Mal, of Phillipa and James – he wishes he could see them again, wishes he could gather them in his arms and tell them he loves them. He hopes that Mal won’t have to identify his body.


End file.
